Worm Gear Recall Fix Reviews

[cryptolime]

takes an hour.
Did you tell em you wanna wait? My dealer has times for people who wait and times for people who drop car and leaves. Waiting will take longer to get an appointment.

Yea i’m at the dealer now for my 8 Am appt. Also getting the intake valves cleaned with their overpriced induction service. Goin to do it myself next time but i’ve been lazy so we’ll see if i notice any difference. I do a lot of idling so i imagine i have some carbon buildup

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[BigBird]

between this and the rattles im not sure if I plan to buy a FL5 anymore lol.. is this recall a fix or a bandaid solution?

The car doesn't need you. Look elsewhere. Thanks.

 

[MoodySara]

I bought an FL5 on April 9. It's manufacture date is 12/2024.
So far, I haven't noticed the steering problem.
I have some experience with the problem. My wife's 2024 Civic, manufactured in 01/2024, had a really bad case. I hated driving it, After it was fixed, it steered like a different car.

 

[svvitch]

Took less than an hour on my FL5. No change. Felt fine before. I did it because if any future problems, I don't want to get denied warranty work for not timely fixing an open recall.

 

[Bandit_TypeR]

between this and the rattles im not sure if I plan to buy a FL5 anymore lol.. is this recall a fix or a bandaid solution?

I had the fix done. Improved my steering immensely. Drives like the day I bought it. I only had one rattle. Under the glove box. Was easy to fix with a small piece of sound deadening material. It's a track car so I never expected it to be whisper quiet. All in all, the car has largely been rattle-free. Just over 5k miles.

 

[FL5HondaGuy]

I had the fix done. Improved my steering immensely. Drives like the day I bought it. I only had one rattle. Under the glove box. Was easy to fix with a small piece of sound deadening material. It's a track car so I never expected it to be whisper quiet. All in all, the car has largely been rattle-free. Just over 5k miles.

I also get a rattle from the glove box area. Could you share a pic of where and what you used to eliminate it ?

 

[cryptolime]

t

Yea i’m at the dealer now for my 8 Am appt. Also getting the intake valves cleaned with their overpriced induction service. Goin to do it myself next time but i’ve been lazy so we’ll see if i notice any difference. I do a lot of idling so i imagine i have some carbon buildup

got the car back and feels the same. had a replacement rack installed at 18k miles (46k now) so must've had the updated spring/grease on that rack. took 2.5 hours with the induction service.

engine feels smoother. and LTFT went from -2 to +0.8. Had knock control spike up to .82 after 10 minutes of high rpm highway driving on the way home. looks like i had one misfire looking at my data logs. jumped from .55 to .82 instantly. guess it dislodged some carbon. that's the highest i've ever seen knock control since i've started monitoring it. also my high throttle rattle around 3k rpms is gone.

 

[Bandit_TypeR]

I also get a rattle from the glove box area. Could you share a pic of where and what you used to eliminate it ?

https://www.civicxi.com/forum/threads/interior-noises-rattles-creaks-squeaks.51263/post-905150

 

[zumbooruk]

engine feels smoother. and LTFT went from -2 to +0.8. Had knock control spike up to .82 after 10 minutes of high rpm highway driving on the way home. looks like i had one misfire looking at my data logs. jumped from .55 to .82 instantly. guess it dislodged some carbon. that's the highest i've ever seen knock control since i've started monitoring it. also my high throttle rattle around 3k rpms is gone.

curious... what is LTFT? and how do you view it and the knock control?

 

[cryptolime]

curious... what is LTFT? and how do you view it and the knock control?

LTFT is long term fuel trim. and i view it and knock control using an OBD2 Bluetooth adapter and the Car Scanner app

 

[Cueyo]

LTFT is long term fuel trim. and i view it and knock control using an OBD2 Bluetooth adapter and the Car Scanner app

To add to this ltft and stft (short term fuel trim) are measurements of how rich or lean your car is running. Lean is pretty much always worse than running rich, and engines will choke themselves out running rich rather than blow up running lean.

Read it online once as a example of playing catch, where if you throw a baseball to someone and they have to run to catch it and throw it back, that they'll eventually just start in the spot they need to be. In that way, stft stays at a certain level long enough, ltft will compensate by always starting there.

 

[TypeRD]

i don't see how the recall would fix the deformed worm gear. might delay the issue. i wonder if those who had replacement racks installed already will run into the same problems. my original failed at 18k miles. i'm at 15k miles on the replacement rack and it's ok so far

The problem isn’t the worm gear itself. It’s the worm gear spring. The spring was mis-manufactured and has either too much or too little tension. I can’t remember which.

 

[FiveSeven108]

The problem isn’t the worm gear itself. It’s the worm gear spring. The spring was mis-manufactured and has either too much or too little tension. I can’t remember which.

so the recall which includes the spring is a long term (permanent) fix?

 

[TypeRD]

so the recall which includes the spring is a long term (permanent) fix?

I can’t imagine the intent being less than long term (permanent), can you?

Keep in mind this doesn’t affect every Civic made. It only affected some cars that were made during a certain timeframe. It’s not like they changed the design of the steering gear box later in production. It’s just 1 part in the assembly was not made to correct specifications. Basically : 1. Replace bad part with good part. 2. Repack with grease. 3. Done.

 

[zumbooruk]

The problem isn’t the worm gear itself. It’s the worm gear spring. The spring was mis-manufactured and has either too much or too little tension. I can’t remember which.

The primary cause of the steering issue was an insufficient annealing process during the production of the steering gearbox worm wheel and a high-load single unit break-in process during manufacturing further compromised its material properties. As a result, the worm wheel teeth were prone to swelling when exposed to environmental heat and moisture, which increased the pressure angle and surface pressure. This swelling reduced the grease film thickness between the worm wheel and worm gear, leading to excessive internal friction

Compounding the issue, the worm gear spring preload was set too high, increasing the sliding force between the worm wheel and worm gear. This combination of factors resulted in higher friction and torque fluctuation, manifesting as symptoms such as abnormal steering noise, a "sticky" feeling when turning the steering wheel, and increased steering effort, particularly at highway speeds or with low vehicle mileage

The issue was attributed to manufacturing flaws at the supplier, Hitachi Astemo Americas

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2024/RCLRPT-24V744-4093.PDF

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